History of Digital Marketing

Throughout the centuries there are key events that have shaped our definition of marketing and this unique form of communication between company and consumer.

Although not a new concept, marketing has evolved significantly since the start of the digital age. With the internet boom and the creation of different online mediums, digital marketing has either accompanies or has entirely replaced traditional, offline marketing.

Take a read through our interactive MintTwist Digital Timeline and discover more about these pivotal moments.

Joining many other start up tech companies in Silicon Valley, Pinterest is born in March 2010. The platform revolves around photo sharing, encourages its members to group ideas together in mood boards and inspires fellow registered Pinterest members.

Social media management tool TweetDeck makes managing Twitter accounts more simple. The platform allows users to schedule tweets to be pushed live automatically. It works by interfacing with the Twitter API.

Google Checkout was launched in 2006 to simplify the online paying process. Allowing users to save their personal information in their Google account, Google Checkout makes the next purchase much easier. However, the function ended in November 2013.

Twitter, the up-to-the-minute, topical social channel, was launched a decade ago in 2006. Today, the platform has over 310 million monthly active users. The 140 character limitation for tweets was based on the site being founded as the ‘SMS of the Internet.’

In 2006, YouTube entered their first advertising partnership with NBC. Gone are the days where users could view a YouTube video clip without pressing ‘Skip Ad’ after 5 seconds of an advertisement playing.

Google’s personalised search was initially introduced in 2004 in beta. On April 20 2005, the service was made available in a non-beta stage, yet it was still a separate entity to regular Google search. The algorithm analyses people’s recent search history and suggests the most appropriate search results.

For digital marketers, Google Analytics was just the tool needed. Providing data on a site’s visitors customer journey and behaviour, the service was offered by Google in November 2005. Now, companies can view and report upon their online marketing campaigns and turn insight into appropriate action.

YouTube, the second most used search engine after Google and the most popular video-sharing website was launched in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees. It was later bought by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion. The ‘Me at the zoo’ video started it all off.

Founded in 2005, Reddit is an entertainment and social news website. Users can vote to decide the post entries’ position on the page. The platform now has 542 million monthly visitors, ranking #25 in the world.

The ‘Facebook.com’ domain was purchased for $200,000 on 1 August 2015. Both Google and Yahoo offered Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg $2 billion, which he declined. Today, Facebook has more than 1.65 billion users.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was introduced to assist in guaranteeing credit card security and avoid fraudulent online activity in 2004. This global standard covers all the major cards and allows users to better control and protect their personal data.

Rand Fishkin launched SEOMOZ, now known only as ‘Moz’ in 2004. Since its introduction, it has become theSEO industry authority to determine a site’s rankings for search engine optimisation. Although companies were once only concerned with having “good” SEO, now relevant content must also be considered for searchers and site visitors to enhance the user experience.

In addition to colloquial acronyms such as ‘LOL’ and ‘OMG’ being added to the dictionary, in 2004 the first multimedia email was sent. Thus, the basis of email marketing and how we receive subscription emails from brands and companies today, was set. Email is dead, long live email!

The search engine Google went public in August 2004. 19.6 million shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. With the search engine going public, some employees who had large stakes in the company became instant millionaires.

Digg.com, the news aggregator, came into existence in 2004. Delivering trending and engaging stories featured across the internet. The site was redesigned in July 2012 to enhance social content sharing capability.

Launched by Ludicorp in February 2004, the photo-sharing site became an instant hit. Early versions of Flickr featured a chat room called FlickrLive, where users could exchange real-time photos. Today, Flickr introduced 1000 GB of free storage for all users accounts to maintain the increasing image storage demand. In addition to Flickr, the site has rolled out other features such as Flickr App, Flickr Camera Roll and Uploadr are very popular among users.

Gmail, an email service, was launched on April Fool’s Day, 2004. Known by the code name Caribou, the project was the brainchild of Paul Buchheit. Initially, the use of the email platform was limited to Google employees, but was made publicly available in February 2007.

Facebook was launched by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, as a social networking platform to upload one’s personal profile and virtually connect with friends. With 1.65 billion users today, Facebook was initially limited to Harvard students and then to those who attended a higher education institution in the U.S. It was made public in September 2006 to everyone with a registered email address.

In late 2002, Reid Hoffman recruited a team of old colleagues from SocialNet and PayPal to work on a proposal he had recently brainstormed. And just six months later, LinkedIn was launched. Who needs business cards?

One of the first social networking sites, MySpace offered users the ability to share personal profiles, photos, music and videos. Additionally, MySpace provided users the space to engage with groups and blogs. In 2006 in the U.S, the social platform was more visited then Google. It was acquired by News Corporation in 2005 for $580million.

On 28 April, 2003 Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, an online music store that allows customers to quickly find, purchase and download an exact song or album for a minimal price, without subscription fees.

Adding to the already massive popularity of Google, Google launches Google Grants, which provides non-profit organisations with $10,000 per month of in-kind AdWords advertising to promote their initiatives.

Google AdSense is an advertising placement service. The platform allows publishers to present specific advertisements on specific website pages with the aim of earning revenue every time a visitors views or clocks the ad.

The digital tech industry wouldn’t be complete without company buy outs. eBay acquired online payments company PayPal in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. It then phased out its own competing service, eBay Payments.

The most interesting of all our timeline’s entries occurred in 2002, when our digital agency officially burst onto the scene. Founded by childhood friends Alexis Pratsides and Elliott King, our full-service digital agency based in Kentish Town, North London now boasts over 20 digital strategists.

In February 2002, Google introduced a new version of AdWords. Google once again established itself by launching the new version of AdWords and rewarding advertisers with ‘positions’ based on the relevance and bid pricing of their ads.

MailChimp, an email marketing service, was founded in 2001. Beginning as a paid service, it is now the world’s leading email marketing platform. By 2014, the platform was sending out over 10 billion emails per month.

Kingston Communications, a regional telecommunications operator in the UK, launched KIT – Kingston Interactive Television. KIT was one of the first companies to launch video on demand. Unfortunately, the KIT service was terminated when subscriber numbers fell from around 10,000 to 4,000 in 2006.

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